Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to the witnesses who are here.
I'll try to keep my comments as succinct as I can. However, I think Mr. Kmiec's rationale for motion is that he wants to see the political will, but, as Minister Carr indicated a number of weeks ago, the opposition doesn't seem to take yes for an answer.
The Prime Minister has clearly said that this pipeline will be built and that it is in the national interest. Let me quote him, because the whole reason Mr. Kmiec asked that we look at this is to engage the finance committee and the finance minister. In his speech, the Prime Minister said, “As such, I have instruct the Minister of Finance to initiate formal financial discussions with Kinder Morgan, the result of which will be to remove the uncertainty overhanging the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project.”
Now, I fully understand and appreciate the fact that Mr. Kmiec filed his motion prior to the Prime Minister's statement, but Mr. Kmiec should find—and the people, the workers, and the Canadians across the country concerned about this pipeline should feel—that the political will is there. The comment has been made clearly. The Prime Minister and the ministers have said so time and time again in the House, and the Prime Minister directed the Minister of Finance to move forward on these discussions, which is exactly what Mr. Kmiec just asked for, his exact rationale for this study. While I appreciate his request and the rationale behind it, the government is doing it. The Prime Minister is doing it.
The other point I'd like to make is that Mr. Kmiec gave the rationale for the finance committee to consider studying this and to basically do a legal review and provide a legal opinion for the Prime Minister and the government. This is the finance committee. This is not the justice committee; this is not the committee that would provide a legal opinion. Then it's suggested that the finance committee do this review, a process that the natural resources committee would have looked at.
While I appreciate and I think Mr. Kmiec's concern and the opposition's concern for workers is real, at the end of the day, you're directing it to the finance committee, yet the Minister of Finance has already been engaged in this file from the Prime Minister. If you want a legal opinion, then it's not the finance committee that should ever be tasked with that.
Another point that Mr. Kmiec raised was the length of time since the approval of the project. The problem is—and perhaps he was looking for this information when he was looking through his documents—that one of the greatest delays was a result of the former Harper government not consulting with indigenous peoples. This is why the process had to be re-established by our government. I can appreciate the frustration about the delay, but had the process and consultation been done in the first place under the Harper government, perhaps the political uncertainty wouldn't be there. This government is committed to moving forward, and I think the Prime Minister has been quite clear in engaging the finance minister that that's exactly the intention we are moving forward with.
I think, in fairness, the motion was filed prior to that, and I think Mr. Kmiec should allow this work to be done and not have the negotiations in public, because frankly, that's would undermine the result that I think you want. I'm going trust our Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance to move forward on these discussions in the interests of Canada and not try to make this a political back-and-forth at the finance committee to establish a legal opinion. It's simply the wrong committee when we have the Minister of Finance engaged in these consultations, engaged in these negotiations with the very people he should be.
I'm quite confident in the work that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance will do, and I think, in fairness, Mr. Kmiec should probably hold off on this motion since, again, he tabled it prior to some of these announcements, but we are doing exactly as he is seeking.
Thank you.